At age ninety-three, spiritual trailblazer Huston Smith takes readers behind the scenes of his near-century of adventurous seeking. Few have done as much as Smith, who was born to missionaries in China in 1919, to explore and share the world’s religious and spiritual traditions — and none have done so with such accessibility, wonder, and delight.

We were thrilled to learn that Brian Patton, author of The Sexy Vegan Cookbook, was recently nominated for VegNews magazine’s “Best Cookbook Author” award. We certainly feel that the title more than befits him, and we’d love to enlist your assistance in helping him win this prestigious award.

I wish everyone would just sit down and write something. I wish my parents, grandparents, and ancestors would have written down something about their lives. They would have left more of a legacy.

We’ve turned writing into something scary and challenging; we’ve turned so many forms of creativity into a big, important deal, when ultimately it’s all very simple: You just sit down and write something and see what happens. Or sing something or paint something or put on a show and see what happens. It’ll probably be more worthwhile than watching reruns on TV.